This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Thursday, April 30, 2015

"25 to Life": a boy infected with HIV by a blood transfusion grows to manhood without symptoms and secretly

The documentary “25 to Life” (2014), directed by Michael
Brown, tells the sobering story of William Brawner, now in his mid 30s, who
kept his HIV-positive status secret for much of his life.

But Brawner’s story is one of having to deal with one’s hand
in life – call it karma if you want. He
was scalded by an abusive man (father??) as a boy, and given skin grafts and
blood transfusions. This all happened in
the early 1980s, well before there was a blood test for HIV (or even before the
“HTLV-III” virus has been identified).
So his story is a little bit parallel to that of Ryan White.

His mother (and close family) decided to keep it a secret,
and so does he, for a very long time.
Will started taking AZT, which had side effects. But he grew up into manhood without
progressing into symptoms About 10
percent of people infected with HIV probably do not develop major symptoms
(although their blood work is abnormal) for decades, maybe never, if left
alone. They may have a gene that resists HIV transmission among T-helper cells.

The film does make a strong point, quickly, that people feared HIV-infected others regardless of how they were infected; there is an illogical presumption of "guilt" in people's minds. This was common in the 1980s with people who got HIV at birth for from blood transfusions.

Brawner grows up, and develops the usual heterosexual interest
in women, and wants to have a wife and family. (He seems to have recovered from the burns, which is no longer an appearance issue itself, and that is rather amazing.) He does, at some point, tell his girl friend (Bridgette), whom he
marries (if I follow right – this point is glossed over in the media), and they
ponder whether they need to use condoms and can have children. Finally she does get pregnant, toward the end
of the film. As far as I could tell, she
didn’t get infected. Many heterosexual partners do not get infected, and
the virus is even harder to transmit from women to men than from men to women
(an argument that the right wing tried to use against gay men in the
1980s). He learns to give her shots – is
this for diabetes (which sometimes first shows up in pregnancy)?

For years, though, he does not tell close friends, and
attends Howard University and is popular, with no one knowing. But it is common
in life not to know a lot of things about friends, right? Some news clips (even more than the film)
however, do talk about his behavior, which
sounds questionable.

The official Facebook is here The distributor is the African-American Film
Festival Releasing Movement, along with Black Lives Matter and

There are numerous articles about the film, such as on
indiewire here , PGN here and “The Root” here. and NPRhere.

Analytics

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at JBoushka@aol.com.

At billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com , the privacy of my visitors is of extreme importance to me. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files Like many other Web sites, billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com does not use cookies.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com .
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following link.

Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on my site. My advertising partners include ....... Google Adsense

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com 's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

Especially for EU visitors: This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. For more info visit https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/cookies/